the taxi ride from hell

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time letting it go. After all, the baby's now napping. I finally got to stop smelling like baby piss and puke. And we still have three or four hours tomorrow morning to making things right. Hopefully.

The key may be to stop thinking about what might have been. What easily could have been. If the taxi driver we hailed from in front of the American Embassy didn't misread the direction to the Chinese Consulate and headed towards the fifth ring instead of the rightful second ring of Beijing. If I had said something when my husband pointed this out instead of holding our sleeping child in my arms, afraid of waking him up. If we had, despite the subsequent two hours of sitting in the taxi while it shuttled back to the opposite end of the city, still made the morning shift of the notary office.

As it turned out, we arrived at our destination just as the morning shift ended. The way the Chinese government treats its civil workers, they basically only need to work four hours a day, with an absurdly long lunch, and a minimal degree of civility and patience to the civilians they serve. So we puttered around the consulate entrance for two more hours, joining the queue that formed 20 minutes before the afternoon shift started, only to find out that the building we really needed to go to, the one on the other side of the building we were in, did not have an afternoon shift. So, basically, everything we've done since 9:30am when we got into the taxi had been completely in vain.

I hate stupendous amount of wasted time. And energy. And causing a baby to become whiny, crying, and super tired because he nursed constantly in the taxi for comfort, and then threw up milk all over himself and me, and then leaked urine all over himself and me as he screeched and yelled and pummeled his dad and me. I was sad for the lost nutrients, and annoyed by the sour smell that encircled me for the rest of the afternoon.

When the official at the Chinese Consulate told me that it's not their job to fulfill what we needed at that place, I literally felt a stab of white hot rage. I closed my eyes and stood still for just a minute so that I wouldn't scream. Or slam the pen I was holding into my eye. All this work for nothing, and losing the opportunity to tour other parts of Beijing during the afternoon with a happy sense of accomplishment.

We rode the subway from there back to the hotel. It took half an hour, one transfer included.

beijing snapshots

The water here is questionable... For the life of me, I don't understand why no matter how often I wash the cups and the kettle at our hotel, the water continues to have a white powdery precipitation. Apparently my friend H. had the same issue when she studied in Beijing for a semester. Without cleaning, the white powder would form a thick layer in her electric water boiler. I wonder if the odd element in the water is the cause of my somewhat distressed GI situation that's starting to become more pronounced. I'm grateful that my son seems to be fine and, in fact, is eating "adult food" a lot more since we arrived.

There's a cafe kitty-corner from our hotel that gave my husband a free pass for the two cups of coffee he had the second day we're here. The reason: appreciation for allowing the staff to play with our son. And here we were appreciating them for giving us some free time to ourselves. I love how the mainland Chinese culture is so...communal about children. How much of this is an adaptation to the one-child policy? Cousins call each other brothers and sisters, as do unrelated kids of similar ages. Public spaces are often filled with grandparents and their charges mingling with other parental figures and children.

The flip side to the above attitude is how nosy/interfering people can get. I suspect that the flight attendant who whisked my son away to the cockpit area (while I got a much-needed shuteye on the flight) fed him some cheesecake despite my warning that he's allergic to dairy. Chinese people on the whole don't seem to believe in allergies. And they also firmly believe in their own way of raising kids, like when I got pretty loudly berated on two occasions by grandfather figures for not putting socks on my son while we're outdoors. Dang it, it's 75 degrees! He is not freezing!

The aforementioned cafe also has a stray dog lingering around its entrance. The white puppy has been recently abandoned, it appears, and no one in the square of which our hotel is a part of has the heart to shoo it away. I've heard several employees persuading each other to adopt the dog. No takers yet. My son screeches excitedly every time we pass by. The dog shows remarkable intelligence in eyeing my son warily.

After two days of living with our hotel room facing the hotel parking lot, it finally dawned on me this afternoon that there's a small shanty-town forming on the far side of the parking lot. So far, about seven small make-shift shelters show indications of people residing in them. No wonder there's a clothesline strung up along the brick wall containing the parking lot, with blankets hung up to dry. It's so strange to see people living like that within this very affluent neighborhood. China's visibly growing gap between its rich and poor really is no joke.

a more coherent mind purge than previously

Lately, the random tendency to burst into tears and feel a bone-crunching despair is starting once again to interfere with how I take care of my son and husband. I took to re-reading A Praying Life by Paul Miller and then took a bus to a bookstore in Hangzhou that shares my son's Chinese name. For one, I love bookstores and the outing helped to cheer me up a little (yay, new place to visit! On my own - while ergo-ing my son) = independence. Joy!) and, for another, I was able to get a prayer journal. If any time is most suitable for constant prayers, it is now.

This is what I have realized about moving from the U.S. to China: life in China is harder on many basic levels, and freedom and civil rights no longer shout out in my consciousness on a mostly theoretical level. It has been easy for me to live well in the U.S. and not have to remember the suffering in the world if I didn't have the time or energy that day. It is less easy to avoid when the population is so dense and I see so many people from all walks of life simply by riding in our apartment's elevator. Or going to the canteen to eat. Or trying to get procedures approved by the government or basically any administration here. Or hear about friends who have to either get an abortion or deliver in hospital staircases because doctors weren't willing to get in trouble for helping to deliver babies without permission-to-birth permits. My husband says it leaves him drained, feeling helpless and angry. He says he is starting to understand why God cares so much for the oppressed.

In this weakened, sad condition, it is impossible for us to function without praying every time we feel the power drain. The impotence to do more. Because of this, I find myself now praying all the time. In a greater context, it is a huge relief to be struggling so much now. I had struggled in the U.S. too, before I left. That struggle was against complacency, the opium haze of comfort and (what I now recognize as) luxury, and my own inability to always remember the poor (of every kind). Now, the battles are clearer; the enemies are out in the open and I feel like it's a more honest fight. Like when one of our church friends get passed over in work because he doesn't want to lie for the company and shortchange clients. Like how my husband and I resolved to take significant financial loss instead of performing some shady exchanges as his department suggested in order to claim the promises his boss made.

Now we're in Beijing for the week. My husband will attend a math conference. We need to get our marriage certificate notarized in order to continue another ongoing bureaucratic nightmare. And in the meantime I will walk while carrying our son through the historic campus of Beijing University, the epicenter of so many civil uprisings in the past. Where my great aunt taught as a humanities professor before she and her husband committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

Time for bed. Signing off from the new Mac computer my husband got via his grant money. Whee.

蜻蜓點水

There were a few things I really wanted to record this past week, but freegate (the software that I've been using to get past the government firewall) hadn't been working either due to government interference or just because of kinks in the system. The current access may be short-lived, but I've briefly lost my musing mojo. Still, I feel pressed to write something, anything, just because I don't know if I'll have access in the coming week.

I recently started reading a novel that someone here said really captures the spirit of the age in China. How crazed everyone is to own a piece of real estate. How kids are raised. How money is king. How corrupt officials can be. Aside from the annoyance every now and then I have with simplified characters (honestly, it's just so...I have to keep reminding myself not to be so elitist about the history of language. I have to actively quash my linguistic training to stifle my exasperation at such butchery), it's been really eye-opening. And depressing. And illuminating. This novel had been adapted into a nightly drama, which the government has since banned because it casts how the government works in a dubious light.

The same said person (who recommended the above novel) had needed help finding an English class substitute to take over the work of a former teacher. The teacher had skipped town after receiving last month's pay and failed to notify the company until an hour before her class was to begin. At first I had thought she was asking me for help, of which I would gladly give, but it turned out that my husband was the one they wanted. Because he's ethnically Caucasian. They're still looking for a teacher they can hire on a more permanent basis, but I am not an option despite my masters degree and experience teaching rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon because... I am ethnically Chinese. Clearly, only someone who looks white is qualified. On one hand, I've gotten this treatment pretty much all my life. I've gotten used to working doubly hard just to prove I'm equally capable. Still, I'm pretty damned tired of fighting these old prejudices. It's been surprisingly easier for my husband to fit in here (I think). As a white person, he has the "exotic" factor i.e. everyone local wants to hang out with him and be his friend. He is excused for not understanding things. Meanwhile, I am recognized as being Chinese when they want me to do things that they don't want to do themselves. However, when they see me with my white husband and mixed baby, I am often judged (oh yes, I know that look) for marrying a white person in order to, they think wrongly, secure a green card and American citizenship for my child. I am often excluded from things that they consider someone of my background wouldn't understand or know, thereby making me feel like a dumb brute. Things are further complicated by the fact that I am, in fact, not Chinese culturally, but rather Taiwanese. (Or is it Taiwanese-American, as some other people see me?)

Who knows. Does it even matter.

This time has been and continues to be a very humbling time for me. My pride in having lived through the awkward, lonely years as an immigrant away from my parents since I was nine. My pride in picking up jobs to earn my own money. My pride in feeling "in control." My pride is being able to chat with people and have them interested in me for myself and not simply in relation to my white husband.

These things are good to let go, I think. It just sucks to feel like such a nothing. I am getting the smallest of inkling as to what a big deal it was for the creator of the universe to become a poopy, colicky baby and then ordinary, common human wandering around Palestine. To become nothing for us, the world. Wow.

abba, help me remember

In mid-prayer, I felt compelled to type out and record my feeling here. For one thing, it lays out my weakness that much more apparently for me to see and confess. For another, I suspect this is something that is not so easily resolved, and it helps to have a reminder of where I first started so as not to feel like I'm constantly circling the drain at the same place.

Dear Father God,

Please forgive me and protect me from my struggle with judgmentality. It is stemmed from anger; it is stemmed from helplessness. It is stemmed from an awareness of my weakness for all things comfortable and "safe" for myself and my family. The more time I spend here and hear the voices of the people here, the more I feel the distance from reality and life in the United States. I read the news and the blogs of ordinary people there, often with some disorientation. Huh, I think, this is what they take joy in. Weird, I think, that that's considered inconvenient or difficult. I read facebook newsfeeds of people recounting their dinners, full of organic and pasture-raised options, and I feel envy, followed by scorn that a handful of people (in comparison with the rest of the world) can live in such luxury and freedom and not even realize or fully appreciate it. To appreciate it so much that the rest of the world's suffering is a ghastly wound to be dealt with immediately as a terrible affront to all that is Yours.

And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm torn between covetousness and self-righteousness. It makes me truly abominable. I wish I can take a knife to this filthy layer of my heart. Burn it, or chuck it in the trash to rot away. I am helpless even against myself, and my sinful, stupid pride that always wants to elevate myself above other people. Makes me want to pat myself on the back for my so-called sacrifices now. Makes me want to feel superior to other people enjoying their lives. What is wrong with me?! That the things I don't want to do, I do. And they are so evil, that I lose any right to rail against any other evil out there, without first confessing my own ugliness.

I really miss home, except it's no home that currently exists on earth. I long for a time when none of us have to struggle like this anymore, and no one will know loneliness, or poison in our food, or corruption, or children dying before their parents. In the meantime, abba, help me to address these things not with judgment at other people who I feel to be outside of the fray--because they're not, because you have a story to write with every single person you have brought into this world. Help me to be a help more than a hindrance. Help me to keep my eye on Jesus and all that you have made possible through your Sacrifice. Including fixing my sick heart, my stumbling soul.

There is nothing more for me to say. Except that I know how much I need you. Like water, like air. Clean water, pure air. It's so embarrassing to see how sinful I am. Thank you for your unconditional love.

By the power of Jesus' name, amen.

-Your daughter.

all in the life

Today has been such a crazy day. I don't even know where to start recounting it. Also, exhaustion. I wonder if that's how the Chinese government keep the population in submission--by draining everyone of any spare energy outside of what's needed to run around fulfilling paperwork. 

- Praise God that my son did not get crushed in the packed bus (I'm grateful they don't have people-pushers here like the ones for the subways in Tokyo. I seriously think there would be many deaths) we had to take after failing to flag down any of the taxis that drove past us in the rain. 
- Praise God for the numerous people on the bus who yelled at others to stop pushing on my son's behalf, for the elderly woman who actually motioned me over and gave up her seat so I could protect my son better, and for the gaggle of teenage girls who surrounded my son and me and shielded him from the crowd as well as entertained him during the whole bus ride.
- Praise God for all the ridiculously merciful acts of kindness that was showered on us at the public security office (letting us cut in line despite not having a queue number, etc) because my son's started to cry towards the end.
- Praise God that we got assigned a new and far more conscientious handler from the university who's becoming a good friend at this point.
- Praise God that we met the visa deadline right before a three-day weekend (Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!), even though the permanent resident process is still far from over. (Explanation to follow.)

We need prayer for actually securing the permanent resident status. The Chinese embassy in Chicago was supposed to have notarized our marriage certificate so that my son and I could get residency through my husband. Since I had acquired a z-visa through the legitimacy of our marriage certificate, anyone with common sense should figure that our certificate is real. But, alas, blind bureaucracy rules. Gotta keep a billion people employed somehow. So we need to traipse north to Beijing to get it certified before my son and I can try again for residency. Right now we're officially tourists, allowed entry for six more months. My husband, meanwhile, FINALLY secured his expert card, thanks to many nagging phone calls by our handler and more cuteness from my son. But will need to extend his residency after his "real" health insurance kicks in.

I felt less bad about how long this process is taking after our handler told us that, in order for him to transfer his residence from his previous hometown of Shandong to Hangzhou, it took him six visits to the public security office and well over half a year.

what the heck *yawn* / hodgepodge of thoughts

I don't know why I'm so freaking tired lately. It's only around 10pm right now and I am exhausted...have been since 7:30pm...The only reason why I'm up is because this is the only down time I have where it's just me, by myself. No clingy baby who has learned to whine incessantly. No husband in need of processing today's new discoveries. I am a bit sapped out, and am very grateful for this gap in the space-time continuum to just...veg.

Everything is so much harder here. My husband wondered aloud tonight: "China is a bad place with kind people, while the U.S. is a nice place with mean people." What he meant was that there are so many environmental issues in this densely-packed, bureaucratically-stifling country, but the people we've encountered for the most part are kind and eager to help us out. In the States, we are surrounded by beautiful green spaces with wonderfully clean air, but strangers tend to keep to themselves. Very cool and aloof. And, in my case, overtly racist on many occasions. In response to his comment, I wondered why Americans aren't happier that they live in such a beautiful country? I certainly didn't fully appreciate it until now. Maybe that's it. O ingratitude that blinds.

My husband's planning to attend a math conference in Beijing towards the end of this month. I have the choice of being here by myself with the baby or traveling via high speed rail with him up north. The rail has mixed reviews regarding safety. Hm. The last time I was in Beijing was about 15 years ago. I should probably go again...but how will this affect our son's sleep/wake schedule, which is finally starting to form some kind of pattern? Traveling is so much easier without a child. I *am* grateful that by then he would be 10 months old. He's starting to show his own will in very specific and insistent ways, and his strong little personality and idiosyncrasies crack. me. up. Like how he likes to bounce up and down to my cell phone's ringtone every time it rings. Or when he gets tired but still wants to keep playing, how he would squat and rest his head on the floor while his butt and arms still wiggle around. Crazy kid.

As of now, I don't foresee us staying here for longer than my husband's current contract of three and a half years. I'm also leaning away from the possibility of doing my PhD here. Maybe after our son turns one year old, I'll look into part-time teaching at this company that a friend here could refer me to. I'm definitely sure, God willing, that I won't plan to have another child until after we leave for who knows which new city. According to the World Health Organization, the optimal time between siblings is between two and four years anyway.